Feds: Michigan drug ‘pipeline’ tied to heroin resurgence

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade talks to the media during a press conference with fellow U.S. Attorneys and law enforcement from other states at the United States Attorney's Office Eastern District in Detroit.(Photo: Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press)

A drug trafficking pipeline from Michigan to five other Midwest states has caused an alarming spike in prescription pill abuse and a resurgence of heroin addiction, according to federal officials who held a summit Wednesday in Detroit.

“We know in Michigan that we’ve seen a huge spike in prescription pill abuse,” said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade of the Eastern District of Michigan at a press conference. “We’ve also seen a serious resurgence in heroin as addicts turn to that as a cheaper alternative for their opioid addiction. That has resulted in some very significant problems in Michigan, and we seem to be exporting our problems to other states.”

McCade said law enforcement agencies have identified a drug pipeline from Michigan into Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

Heroin overdose deaths in the U.S. tripled from 2010 to 2013, according to the federal prosecutors, who said the number of deaths from all drug overdoses exceeded 43,000 last year. In the Midwest, opiod deaths have increased 62%. Since the beginning of this year, more than 60 people have died of heroin and fentanyl overdoses in Wayne and Washtenaw counties alone. The number of heroin overdose deaths in Oakland County doubled from 2013 to 2014.

Victims range in age from younger teens to adults.

McQuade said people arrested for drugs said Michigan has become a pipeline into other states because they’re trying to reach new markets. McQuade said traffickers often branch out because they feel safer in other states that lack the rival gangs that Michigan has. She said Michigan is also a large producer of heroin because it has a large population of low-income individuals who are often targeted by traffickers.

“It knows no boundaries, it’s not a city versus suburb thing,” she said.

The officials discussed creating a regional strategic initiative as part of the federal Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force program. Under the initiative, law enforcement and prosecutors will investigate and prosecute the movement of heroin and prescription pills from Michigan and Ohio into other states.

Each U.S. attorney has also agreed to engage in district-wide anti-heroin and prescription pill programs. McQuade has enacted Project HOPE — heroin, opioid prevention and enforcement — to target drug traffickers whose distribution results in the death or overdoses of the purchasers of the drug.

McQuade said prevention is also an important part of the initiative’s strategy. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis has found that opioid sales increased fourfold between 1999 and 2010, and this was accompanied by an increase in opioid overdose deaths and substance abuse treatment admissions during the same time period. The CDC says that abuse of opioids results in over $72 billion in medical costs alone each year.

Several police agencies in Michigan, including the Macomb County Sheriff’s office, have equipped its officers with naloxone — in nasal spray form — that could save someone in the throes of an opioid overdose. Other agencies in metro Detroit, including the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, are using naloxone or Narcan to help combat the issue.

David Hickton, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and cochair of the national heroin task force, said the combined heroin and opiate crisis is both a public health and law enforcement emergency.

“We’ve had this acute crisis for some time,” Hickton said. “We need to do everything we can do, as fast as we can do, to deal with this crisis.”

Kerry B. Harvey, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, said he was motivated to deal with the problem not by the litany of tragic statistics, but by the numerous meetings he’s had with families who lost a loved one to addiction.

“We know the people who are profiting from this business are shrewd,” he said.

Steven Dettelbach, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, said he recently held a summit aimed at doctors and talking about ways to prevent patients from becoming addicted. Dettelbach said doctors who are writing prescriptions “with a heavy pen” need to be part of the conversation.

“It’s important that as we talk about this, we really heed what Kerry and Barbara have said,” Dettelbach said. “We are not going to enforce and arrest our way out of this incredibly difficult problem.”